Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that's performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Highlights of the 25/26 season include the prestigious position as Arist in Residence at the New York Philharmonic, touring with the London Philharmonic, and appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Baltimore, Vienna, and Sydney symphony orchestras.

Sheku will perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with his pianist sister, Isata, and violinist Tai Murray and the Chineke! Orchestra on tour in Europe, and with Isata and their brother, Braimah, as violinist on a North American tour in Detroit, Ottawa, Naples (Florida), and Seattle. Sheku also gives the world première of Edmund Finnis’s Cello Concerto, which was written for him, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Roberto Gonzalez Monjas, with further performances of the work with the Dresden Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, and London Symphony orchestras.

Sheku continues his collaboration with Isata for a European duo recital tour in February, taking in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Geneva, Turin, Amsterdam, and London’s Wigmore Hall, where later in the 25/26 season Sheku and Isata return to play chamber music with two more of their siblings, Braimah and Jeneba. In North America, the duo will resume their recital tour including Boston, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and New York’s Lincoln Center. Sheku also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.

A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku released Shostakovich & Britten in May 2025, featuring Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten, which he recorded with Isata Kanneh-Mason. September 2025 sees the release of the second Kanneh-Mason family album, River of Music, also on Decca Classics. Sheku’s 2022 album, Song, showcased his innately lyrical playing in a wide range of arrangements and collaborations, and his 2020 album Elgar reached No. 8 in the overall Official UK Album Chart, making him the first ever cellist to reach the UK Top 10. Sheet music collections of his performance repertoire along with his own arrangements and compositions are published by Faber.

Sheku is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in May 2022 he was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he accepted the role as patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both Breakthrough T1D and Future Talent. Sheku was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Sheku’s performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide.

He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him.

Photo credit: Mahaneela